The Arizona sentinel., 1887-01-08

5. One device which is veritable eye-saver is the protection of the eyes against the direct morning light on waking. How few people think of this, or at least how few arrange their bed rooms so as to provide for it! l have slept and walked in a good many differ ent countries; but it is very seldom that I have found the beds rightly placed in this respect. As a rule, the morning light glares into the sleeper's eyes on waking. Perhaps this position of the body at night is survival of some earlier time when the dangers of war, or, later, the needs of agriculture, made it necessary to awake with the earliest light. But it need scarcely be said that the stress of the morning light is trial to the eyes, and one which they should be spared when possible. The use of bed curtains, still in Europe, but compara- lively rare in our country, was intend- ed to guard the sleeper from this annoy ance; but they cut off the air to such a degree that they are very properly dis used among us.
 I have referred to this rule as hard one to follow, and indeed it may seem to propose no less than revolutionary measure in suggesting that the beds which face the light should be turned the other way. Indeed it is, a GYays feasible, and am the last person i'll the world to urge any thing that should bring confusion upon the hOusekeeper. But one can sometimes make the bed, and sleep in it, with the head turned | away from the light, even though the stringent rules of housekeeping forbid the moving of the bedstead itself And when the sleeper's head can not be | turned away, a screen may be placed between the bed and the window.
 6. Don't read in bed. It is an indis- cretion, to give it the mildest name. It strains the eyes, it curtails the hours of rest-and most of us do not sleep enough-and once in while it sets the house a-fire. Bed is the place for sleep before any thing else, and not primarily the place for pursuing intellectual cult ! ure.
 II. COMING TO SPECTACLES.
 When I was a boy used to envy the wearers of spectacles; they gave sort distinction, 1 thought, even to some commonplace faces. l remember that I looked forward with certain expect ancy to the time when in the order of nature, should be promoted to the use and enjoyment of glasses.
 Well, am using them now, and not with that unmixed delight that 1 eX- pected in them. l find that they make me out older than I was; and learn that while augmenting years are sup posed to bring wisdom, which is all very well, that there are still certain offsets to the value of augmenting years. Perhaps one would just as soon be ten years younger again, and avoid some of his mistakes, even if one had to forego the dignity of spectacles; and yet, when they are resorted to at the right time, and properly chosen, what delight they are, what a comfort! More than this, they are one of the necessi- ties of civilization. We could spare steamboats and railroads almost as soon as spectacles. Imagine the stoppage of work in almost every department of life that would follow the suppression of oculists and opticians!
 Their services, on the contrary, are constantly more and more in demand. Many children are found in need of them; in Germany seventeen per cent. out of ten thousand school children were found to have trouble with their eyes. By the age of forty at least half of the people in our community require to begin with weak glasses of one sort often begin! People who would "make no bones" of wearing ear-trumpets or crutches (because lameness and deafness can not be hidden) will stoutly resist the coming to spectacles. Nothing amuses me more, in quiet way, than to ob- serve the reluctance, the coyness, the backwardness with which my friends defer their privilege, threading, tho wishing, to be near it, and long put ting off their comfort before they come frankly to the luxury of glasses. Peo- pie will put it off for two or three years, and suffer all the time. One of my friends is now going through the proc ess. He has procured his glasses; on occasions he brings them out in a very quiet way; he puts them on almost furtively, and how modestly and yet speedily they slip off again and into a SPOCldllS -ploNl'tcu pOChct! put lHeJ bring him back the clear sight of child hood; he enjoys them, and really he can not do without them for reading fine print; and soon he will use them as unreluctantly as his telephone.
 How shall we select our glasses? We have two classes of advisers in this matter; their names are somewhat simi- lar, but their functions are widely different. We have the oculist or ophthalmic surgeon, trained specialist in all that con- cerns the eye and its conditions of health and of disease; and we have the optician, who may be more or less in- formed in the science of the eye, but whose business is to sell glasses. Which of the two shall we consult?
 The optician, in his business of selling glasses, will often have picked up more than little knowledge of the ordinary requirements of eyes that need his help. Whether you need ''near-sighted'' or ''far-sighted glass" whether strong or a weak pair of lenses,-this he can ordinarily tell. But if the case is any thing out of the ordinary,-if it is question of unequal vision in the two